


Remember This

by Yeomanrand



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, CACW-compliant, Dancing, F/M, Farewell is not goodbye, Friends and Lovers, Friendship/Love, POV Female Character, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Present Tense, between canon and post-credits, canon-compliant kinda, chocolate_box_2017, code-switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: Touch not the soldiermight seem like good advice. But Natasha's definition of "good" has always been a little bit off.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NRGburst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NRGburst/gifts).



> _Note: If you are on a PC, and using 'author's style', hover over non-English words to see a translation in the title text._
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> _Otherwise, see end notes for translations._

Natasha recognizes the sound of fists striking the heavy bag when she rounds the hospital hallway near the gym, though the sound is more uneven than she expects. Slow. Spotty.

She's not supposed to be in Wakanda, let alone at this particular hospital in Birin Zana. She's not supposed to know where Rogers and Barnes are. It's the sort of 'supposed to' she hasn't cared about for years.

_I'm not the one who needs to watch my back._

She signed the Accords because she has enough red in her ledger; it's another way to convince General Ross and the others like him she's their agent. But really, she's her own and she has been since Clint and Coulson gave her back her self. 

T'Challa never knew that. Tony forgot. 

She had her own reasons for wanting to find Rogers and Yasha. She's accepting the risks being here with the barest, cold, invitation brings. And if she'd ended up locked in Ross' floating prison, she'd have allies there, too. 

But she's letting herself off the hook.

She doesn't try to hide her entry into the gym. She's never been afraid to surprise Yasha the way she used to be to surprise Banner. 

The man at the bag, if he sees her, doesn't acknowledge her, even when her breath catches. Silver still crawls its way over his shoulder, beneath scarring as bad as she remembers, but the arm itself ends just below the head of the humerus.

From the thousand-yard stare of his stormy, gunmetal grey eyes, she's not sure he's seeing anything other than the past. Tony isn't talking about what happened in Siberia. From the beating he'd gotten, and because Rogers and Yasha hadn't come home with him, Natasha could guess. With the damage she can see right before her eyes, she no longer has to.

 _Nichego horoshego._

Yasha's swings are slow because he's hitting hard as he can, sending the bag swinging alarmingly, but he has to wait for the bag's back-swing to use a short high jab to stabilize it for another power hit. He's off-balance because of it, moving awkwardly enough he's broken a sweat. 

She moves across the room to brace the bag.

She's not trying to startle him but he pulls his strike at the last moment, hand slapping flat and loud against the bag, flesh on canvas. His eyes widen, his lips part; his brows contract and he steps a half-pace away from her and from the bag; he looks at the floor and his shoulders slump.

"You could at least recognize me," she says again. Her Yasha, Steve's Bucky, he hadn't been running the show when she last saw him. She had recognized the mechanical hitch in his movements; not the silky movements of the predator she'd first known, the one she sees in his shift of weight and toss of overlong-hair.

He shakes his head, looks toward the door she'd come in.

" _Ne pritvoryaysya_ ," she tells him. 

His lips part and he sighs. 

" _Ya tebya znayu,_ " he finally says. "You were at the facility where they brought me. You were part of Stark's team at the airport."

She lets her eyebrow twitch. "If those were the only places, Yasha, you'd be fighting me already."

"My name is Bucky," he answers, with the same firmness he'd told Zemo before the power went out. He sounds exhausted when he continues. "I don't want to fight anyone."

"Just punching bags?"

He looks away from her, at the bag, licks at his upper lip. " _Chego ty hochesh'_?"

She's not sure how to answer, at first; a string of things pop to mind before she can exhale to say any of them. _I want to know you and Rogers are all right. I want to know what happens now. I want to know if you remember me. If you remember us._

She looks at the way he's curled in on himself. Thinks she could probably back him right up against the wall if she wanted, just by advancing. 

She reaches out for his hand; he starts to draw away.

" _Lebedinoye Ozero_ ," she suggests, and his eyes flicker to her face again. She supposes if he didn't remember her, he would have no idea why she'd suddenly named a tragic ballet. 

"Natka," he says; lips twisting slightly as the nickname tells her what she already knows. 

" _Shchelkunchik?_ " Tchaikovsky, again, and a children's ballet neither of them like.

His face crumples into a grimace, and he shakes his head. She catches his hand like it's a frightened bird, in one swift, gentle movement. Yasha — Bucky — freezes so completely his fingers do not even curl toward hers. She can see the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows once, then twice.

" _Ya ne odin v moyey golove_ ," he says. "You should go."

"You're worried about what's in your head, but not that I might have betrayed you?"

His hand remains still in hers, but there is the tiniest lift of the right side of his mouth when he shakes his head this time. "You haven't. Or we wouldn't be talking."

She gives a little cant of her head, shrugs her shoulders. He's not wrong. She's learned a lot since he was one of her teachers, but he still knows how she thinks. How she thought. And if she'd brought the others, Stark would never have let her come in alone, or at all.

Ballet would be lovely, and she's sure he could still lift her even one-handed, but he doesn't need formal steps and rituals. She keeps her grip on his hand, pulls him a little closer. His eyes watch her face, wary, and his muscles are like metal cord beneath his skin when she presses their chests together, sets her left hand on his lower back. Shifts her grip on his hand, just a little, to raise his arm.

"Natka..."

Too close for a waltz, technically, but she needs to feel him. Needs him to feel her.

"It's not all right, Bucky," she says. " _Chto bylo, to proshlo_. There's no undoing the past, for either of us. No undoing anything we've done. Only the possibility for atonement, if we're very good."

His head drops, cheek pressing into her hair over her ear. She can hear the soft rush of air in and out of his nose. They don't have long. She has to be gone before Rogers returns, because the less she sees with her own eyes, the easier the lies become.

She meets his eyes. Trusts him to see the reminder, there, of _all_ they have shared, together and apart. Death, and red, and unmaking.

"Let me lead," she asks. "For just one dance. Let me show you we can touch without hurting each other."

He shivers, and his chin lifts slightly, and then he nods, turning his head slightly to press a kiss against her hair.

She smiles a little to herself, and starts humming the first thing with the right rhythm that comes to her mind. Shostakovich, she thinks. They breathe in time and she sets them off, twisting them gracefully around the boxing equipment until Bucky relaxes enough to squeeze her hand with his.

"I remember you," he murmurs. "I remember everything."

She nods, a shiver of her own running down her spine, and they sigh together, their bodies still swaying to the rhythm of unheard music.

"What are you going to do?"

"Steve's going to retire like he already said," he says, giving her hand a little squeeze. His metal shoulder curls toward her almost like he wants to fold her in an embrace. "I'm going back in cryo."

She pulls back a little so she can see his face; he looks away again, down toward their joined hands.

" _Skol'ko volka ne kormi, on vsyo v les smotrit,_ " he says, softly. "I don't know how we're going to dig the triggers out of my head. Or if we can. I can't — I've done enough harm."

 _I remember everything,_ he said. She lets go his hand to touch his cheek. He turns his head, though his lips thin in discomfort.

"I can't lose that fight another time," he says, pressing his cheek against her hand and looking down into her face. His hair has fallen over his eyes like a dark slash and she reaches up to brush it away. "Not now. Not when they'd make me ride along inside myself with you as my targets. Not when I remember you."

His next exhale is shaky, but his eyes are dry. "It was bad enough when I didn't know I couldn't remember."

She strokes her thumb over his cheek.

"You'll find a way," she says, with a small, soft smile that contains no teeth. "You've got all the best resources here. They'll take care of you, or they'll answer to Rogers and, I suspect, their king.

"And absolutely to me."

She sees the tiniest flash of his smile, but the nod he gives her is sober. She doesn't like the thought of him frozen and vulnerable, like the _myortvaya tsarevna_ in his crystal coffin.

She can't give him much. She can't give him freedom, or take the memories away. She can't erase the red in his ledger any more than she can hers. 

But she can give him the dance. A tiny bit of trust in himself. Her trust, and his choice.

And one soft kiss, pressed to the side of his mouth. Not to wake him, but to take with him into his long, cold sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beloved shinychimera for her beta assistance to Mr. Shinychimera for heavy bag advice, and to egelantier for helping me out with my Russian. Any remaining errors are mine and mine alone.
> 
> Also thanks to NRGburst for the prompt! I hope you enjoy your gift.
> 
> Russian-English translations:  
>  _Nichego horoshego_ : Nothing good  
>  _Ne pritvoryaysya_ : Don't pretend  
>  _Ya tebya znayu_ : I recognize you  
>  _Chego ty hochesh'_ : What do you want  
>  _Lebedinoye Ozero_ : Swan Lake  
>  _Shchelkunchik_ : The Nutcracker  
>  _Ya ne odin v moyey golove_ : I'm not alone in my head  
>  _Chto bylo, to proshlo_ : What used to be is gone  
>  _Skol'ko volka ne kormi, on vsyo v les smotrit_ : A leopard can't change its spots (lit. However well you feed the wolf, he still looks at the woods.)  
>  _myortvaya tsarevna_ : dead princess, as in _The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights (bogatyrs)_ , a Russian fairy tale similar to Snow White


End file.
